Pastors weighing whether to endorse candidates or not

By Ray Reed

Published: September 20, 2008

With six Sundays to go until Election Day, some preachers may be weighing the risks of endorsing a presidential candidate.

Or not.

Endorsements involve spiritual, legal and practical viewpoints, as well as social repercussions. Most pastors avoid the potential conflicts; a few take them on.

Two legal defense groups, one with a Lynchburg connection, say they stand ready to defend — for free — any church whose tax-exempt status is challenged for taking a political stand.

“We are not advocating that people go out and intentionally violate” a law, but “if someone is contacted by the IRS we will defend that church,” said Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, a public-interest law firm that has represented about 20 churches in tax issues.

At least one Lynchburg pastor says he plans to let his congregation know where he stands, personally, in the presidential race.

“I think every preacher has a responsibility to share his or her decisions and their reflections on who should govern our land,”

said the Rev. James E. Coleman

of Providence Ministries International on Oakley Avenue.

The Rev. Jonathan Falwell said he will concentrate on preaching the Gospel at Thomas Road Baptist Church, where his father once left no doubt about his support for Republican candidates. Jerry Falwell gained national attention for backing politicians, starting with Ronald Reagan.

“I don’t intend to endorse anyone,” Jonathan Falwell said. “I don’t think it’s my role to be telling anyone who to vote for.”

No church has ever lost its tax-exempt status over political remarks from a pulpit, Staver said.

Another group, calling itself the Alliance Defense Fund, hopes a minister somewhere will openly encourage the congregation to back a candidate, preferably next week. The ADF has declared Sept. 27 “Pulpit Freedom Sunday.”

The defense fund also hopes the IRS will confront a pastor who supports a candidate, thereby producing a test case for a never-seriously-challenged 1954 law that prohibits tax-exempt nonprofit groups, including churches, from engaging in politics.

Not many pastors are as eager for conflict as the ADF seems to be.

Aside from the likelihood of alienating some — or many — people in the pews who don’t share the pastor’s preference of a politician, there’s a chance an endorsement could put the church’s tax-exempt status in jeopardy.

David Cobb, pastor of First Christian Church on Rivermont Avenue, said that he thinks “endorsing a candidate is fine; just don’t expect your church to continue as a nonprofit” entity.

Cobb said he’s a member of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a group that directly opposes the ADF viewpoint that the tax-exemption issue should be tested in court.

“We’re churches first, nonprofits second,” Cobb said.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, and also prohibits government from establishing a religion, Cobb said.

“The genius of our Constitution is that it steers us between those two things. We have to be careful about

protecting free speech, and also about passing laws that make it look like the government is guaranteeing a religion — or no religion,” Cobb said.

Churches have a responsibility to speak about social issues, Cobb said.

“As far as using the church to endorse a candidate, that just undermines a church’s ability to speak prophetically,” he said.

“Jesus gives us a way to resolve conflict,” Cobb said. “I don’t see a place where he or any of his followers endorsed Caesar,” the Roman ruler of the Holy Land in New Testament times, Cobb said.

The Rev. Larry Davies, superintendent of the 61 United Methodist Churches in the Lynchburg District, expressed similar views about supporting candidates.

“I don’t think you will hear our preachers talking about politics,” Davies said.

His reasons are based at least 90 percent on spiritual principles, the United Methodist pastor said.

Although prophets were once regarded as people who should provide guidance to a population, “I don’t think preachers are looked on in today’s world in the same way,” Davies said.

Pastors can comment with authority on social issues such as marriage, even if they become political issues, Davies said.

“But in ordinary politics, choosing candidates, I think that’s an insult to the people who sit in the congregation” if a pastor were to endorse or oppose a candidate from the pulpit, Davies said.

“I think the best thing we as pastors can do is pray for our leaders and support whoever gets elected, and help them remember God is a part of everything,” Davies said.

“I think God can work with both candidates,” he said.

Jonathan Falwell elaborated somewhat on his own political stance when a French TV crew visited Thomas Road Baptist Church.

In a video posted in early August by France 24, an international news and current affairs television channel, Falwell indicated a preference for John McCain a month before the Republican National Convention.

“He is a person I can get behind and support and look at and see where he can really do some good things for our country,” Falwell said of McCain, “and so while he may not be the 100 percent perfect person, you know, none of us are and we just have to work with what God gave us,” Falwell said.

Falwell said he made that comment in the context of a question from the French TV crew about a possibility, being talked about at the time, that many evangelical Christians might sit out the election. Since then, McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate and energized evangelicals and the Republican Party.

Everyone should vote because Americans have gone to war to protect that right, Falwell said, “and we can’t spend all our time looking for the perfect candidate.”

Coleman, at Providence Ministries, didn’t hold back on his support.

Coleman delivered the invocation at Barack Obama’s rally in Lynchburg Aug. 20 and, “as an individual, I will be supporting Barack Obama when I vote,” he said in an interview.